


The Restless Spirits of the Limberg House

by crystalrainwing



Series: TUA Crossover Requests [1]
Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Creepy, Gen, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Post-Season/Series 02, lots of implied stuff that’s my personal headcanons/theories, no beta we die like ben, request, somewhat open ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-19 02:13:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29743407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystalrainwing/pseuds/crystalrainwing
Summary: The stairs are dark and forbidding, and look to be coated in patches of soft moss.“Helloooo! Anyone down here? Any ghosties that want to, I don’t know, show their stupid little faces?”Now, this would be a normal thing, if it had been Shane who said it. But the voice comes from deeper in the basement, and it isn’t a familiar one.Or, Ryan and Shane go to check out a haunted house, and find something they don’t expect.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves/David “Dave” Katz (mentioned), Ryan Bergara & Shane Madej
Series: TUA Crossover Requests [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2186061
Comments: 6
Kudos: 57





	The Restless Spirits of the Limberg House

**Author's Note:**

> idk if this is any good i have a headache and my sisters are fighting it’s hard to concentrate lol  
> for the full experience listen to [this song](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4l6VoU5MILU) while you read :)  
> post-s2, sparrow timeline

_Cause I don't open up, I just push it down_

_Might not work forever, but it works for now_

_What's the point in even trying to let it out?_

_What's the use in weighing both of us down?_

_But if it helps you_

_I can try better_

_We can both pretend we'll live forever_

_Or can I tell you that you don't remember_

_Everything we've done, we've done together_

The video opens with a shot of an old, crumbling brick house. There are parts of the walls missing, but not enough to affect the structural integrity of the house. It won’t be collapsing anytime soon.

Ryan glances at the camera, the light illuminating his face in a way that makes _him_ look like a ghost. He laughs nervously. “I really don’t want to go in there.”

Shane walks into view. “Yeah, we’ll probably catch some kind of deadly mold disease.”

“I’m not - I’m not going to even dignify that with a response. Are you telling me that you’re not even a little bit nervous about going in? We have to sleep in there! Not even a little?” Ryan says, gesturing at the building. 

Shane grins at him. “Nope.” 

Ryan runs his hand through his hair anxiously. “You’re [beep]ing insane, man.”

The scene changes to the inside of the house, dark and huge. The corners aren’t reached by the light, and neither is the far wall of the room they’re in. Branches and fallen bricks litter the concrete ground, and everything feels a bit too quiet. 

“Okay. Okay. This is awful. I want to leave,” Ryan says with a stiff smile. His foot hits a brick and he startles. 

“Pfft, weak. Hey, ghosties!” Shane yells into the void of the house. There is no echo. “Here, ghostie ghostie!”

Ryan talks quietly, almost a whisper, as if to make up for his friend’s noise. “Stop! We have to sleep here, man, I don’t want them to be mad already!”

“Oh, as if they’re brave enough to mess with the ghoul boys.”

Ryan looks simultaneously exasperated and terrified, an expression he’s perfected over years of working with Shane. “Okay, well, let’s go a little deeper into the house, and then we can use the spirit box.”

Shane’s eye roll is shown for only a second before the scene changes again. This time, it’s the episode intro. 

“This week on Buzzfeed Unsolved, we’re checking out the mysterious and mostly unknown Limberg House as part of our ongoing investigation into the question, are ghosts real?”

Shane and Ryan are now shown sitting on chairs in the near-dark somewhere inside the house. Shane is smirking slightly while Ryan looks nervous, fidgeting with his fingers and glancing into the blackness beyond the cameras. 

More anxious than he usually looks in haunted-house episodes, surely. 

“So this place is a dump. I was kind of expecting to see beer cans all over or something, but I definitely wouldn’t want to come here to hang out,” Shane says, kicking at a small piece of mortar lying on the ground.

Ryan laughs tensely and responds, “Or maybe they got scared off by whatever spirits are haunting this place.”

Shane pretends to consider, putting his head in his hands. “Well, if I was stuck _here_ for my eternal afterlife, I’d be pretty pissed too!”

This time, Ryan’s laugh is more genuine. “Jesus fuck, dude, respect the place!” 

“There’s nothing to respect! Look around you, Ryan! Behold the glory!”

Ryan ducks his head, maybe to hide a smile. “Okay, well, let’s get into it.”

_“On an unknown date in 1893, the Limberg family moved into this house. They had three children, aged 12, 8, and 6, and the house was brand-new. As far as they knew, this was the perfect home for them to raise their kids._

_It wasn’t long, though, before tragedy struck. After just two years living in the house, the family caught a mysterious illness. The youngest two children, Nicholas and Rose, quickly recovered, but Amy, the oldest, died on June 27, 1895. Their mother, Anna (aged 31) died as well, just two days later. The grief-stricken father, Charlie, raised his remaining two children alone._

_By all accounts, he was a great parent, and the kids grew to have happy, successful lives. Perhaps due in part to the lingering spirits of the rest of their family._

_Throughout the childhoods of the younger Limberg kids, there were several unexplained, but fortunate incidents: a house fire quickly noticed, a strange noise leading to the discovery of dangerous plants, a fall that didn’t hurt as badly as it should have. Once, Rose, at age 10, claimed that ‘my sister caught me!’_

_Eventually, in both Rose and Nicholas were married, and Charlie left to move to his dream home nearer to his own parents. It had been 10 years since Amy and Anna died._

_Another family quickly moved into the then-beautiful house, and it was then that the trouble started. Clothes carefully folded were thrown around the room the next day, dishes smashed on the floor, letters torn to pieces before even being collected from the mailbox._

_Unfortunately for the new owners, they couldn’t afford another house. Strangely, their four children (and eventually the two born in the house) never experienced any of the many supernatural effects that afflicted their parents. So the parents adapted, learned to live with it. Eventually, they saved enough to buy another house._

_Hoping to make a little extra cash, they started renting the house out in 1924. Nearly every tenant left after 6 months and complained about bizarre occurances._

_In 1950, the parents of the new owners died and the house passed on to their oldest son, Brendan. (Their last name is withheld as the house still belongs to the family and they don’t want people to find out about the house and ruin it.)_

_Brendan kept the house in decent repair, but eventually had too many other things to do to take care of it. The current owner of the house is his oldest child, who is 30, and they are the one who asked us to check it out._

_We had a brief interview with them, and although we can’t put it in this video, they were very shaken by what they’d seen in the house. They described Amy and Anna both very vividly, and they didn’t know about the original owners of the house beforehand. We had to spend hours researching and then more getting special permission to get the names and photos of the Limberg family._

_It’s pretty clear that this house has a complicated and haunted past..._

_So… will this be the day we finally catch a ghost on camera?”_

The graphics and photos fade from view and are replaced by shaky footage of Ryan and Shane walking down a hall. There are two rooms on each side, and they stop at the last one. Inside is a rusted metal bed frame and a surprisingly sturdy desk. 

Ryan glances around the room before stepping in and Shane follows behind, immediately opening the drawers of the desk. There’s nothing inside. 

Ryan holds the spirit box in one hand, and there is an unmistakable tremor in his voice when he says, “Okay… let’s get started. If there are any spirits in the room, especially Anna and Amy Limberg, you can manipulate the radio channels to send a message through this box.” He turns it on.

Loud bursts of static and occasional clips of voices flood the room, and Shane looks like he’s barely holding in laughter when Ryan jumps at the noise. “If there’s anyone here, can you tell us your name?”

The random noise is replaced by voices in several different pitches moaning, “Klaus! Klaus!” before quickly dissolving back into white noise.

“Is - is your name Klaus?” Ryan asks tentatively. There is no response. They wait awhile longer, asking several other questions (Shane’s much less serious than Ryan’s are), but nothing happens. Shane sighs in relief when the box is shut off. 

“God, I hate that thing.”

Ryan also seems relieved, maybe that there were no more answers. “I know, you say that every time.”

“So. Klaus. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but that doesn’t really sound like Anna or Amy.”

“No, it doesn’t… but it was pretty clear, right? So maybe there’s another spirit here, called Klaus?”

“Or _maybe_ ghosts aren’t real and that was a weird distortion on the hell box,” Shane says in the tone of someone who has said the same thing many times before. 

Ryan sounds agitated when he responds with “I don’t know, man, that was weird. We’ve never had anything like that happen on the spirit box.”

“Well, it is time… to go to the basement! So I guess we’ll see if there’s any _ghostly encounters_ down there.”

The stairs are dark and forbidding, and look to be coated in patches of soft moss. Ryan steps carefully as to not slip, while Shane skips steps on his way down. Neither end up falling, but Shane does reach the bottom much faster. 

“Helloooo! Anyone down here? Any ghosties that want to, I don’t know, show their stupid little faces?”

Now, this would be a normal thing, if it had been Shane who said it. But the voice comes from deeper in the basement, and it isn’t a familiar one.

Ryan looks like he’s about to pass out but Shane just looks intrigued. They glance at each other and nod, as if reaching an agreement. Shane goes in front while his friend follows behind, and the unseen cameraperson trails behind them both. 

The walls are discolored and moss grows in the cracks, pale from lack of light. They are only using the night vision camera, no light as to hopefully not scare off who (or what) -ever is waiting for them in the depths of the concrete void.

As they get farther into the basement there are the echoing sounds of someone walking and breathing. They follow to the source of the noise: a pitch-black room, tucked into the farthest corner. 

Ryan suddenly flips on his flashlight and illuminates a person stumbling back and forth, holding a half-empty bottle of whiskey. He doesn’t seem to notice.

“C’mon, Ben, you little shit! You don’t get to - to… to fuck off to heaven without talking to me. You have s - st… stuff to answer for!” His words are slurred and he gestures wildly as he talks, almost spilling his drink several times. 

Ryan turns to Shane, whispering, “Is… is he a ghost?”

Shane snorts. “No, just some drunk guy.” He raises his voice towards the stranger. “Hey, dude! What are you doing down here?”

Finally, the person turns towards them. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days, weeks, the dark circles under his eyes a stark contrast to his pale skin. His shoulder-length hair is messy and greasy, and his clothes are dirty and wrinkled. He tries to stand still but sways back and forth, unable to balance properly. “Christ on a cracker, didn’t see you there!” He laughs, and it is sharp enough to cut glass. “I’m jus’ looking for my brother…” 

“... Why would your brother be here? This is private property…” Ryan says, now looking more curious than petrified.

“So am I! So am I! That didn’t stop him, did it?” At this he laughs again, bending over and then stumbling to sit on the ground to catch his breath. He clutches dog tags that hang from his neck, squeezing them as if his life depends on it. He doesn’t look happy despite the snickers still filling the room. 

“What the fuck does that mean?” Shane whispers, whether it is to his friend or the camera or just himself is unclear. 

“God, just shut up, would you?! Shut the fuck up for once in your lives! Or, well, not, I guess,” the stranger yells into the room. It is dead silent. He bares his teeth at the empty air.

“Okay, buddy, do you think you could find somewhere else to do this?” Ryan says gently, crouching down to be at eye level with the guy. “We’re trying to shoot a video, we’re ghost hunting.” 

Until he gets to ‘ghost’ the person doesn’t react, instead flicking glassy eyes around the room. But as soon as the word is said, he grabs Ryan’s shoulders tightly. Shane steps forward but Ryan waves him back. “You don’t want to see the ghosts. They - they’re always loud, they’re always screaming… never any peace, not unless you have someone to help you… BEN, YOU SHIT, GET BACK HERE! YOU CAN’T LEAVE ME LIKE THIS!” His voice echoes loudly in the small room, and Ryan flinches back. 

“Have you seen, uh, ghosts down here?” he says quietly, timidly. 

“Here, everywhere… no difference anymore. Where the fuck am I? Where am I? Where’s Ben? Dave? Where are they?” His voice has quickly shifted from bitter, to confused, to panicked. Then his face changes to recognition, resignation. “They’re gone, huh? Gone forever, gone forever…” It sounds singsong, strange. 

Ryan shakes off the hold and stands up again, giving Shane a little push in the direction of the stranger. He makes a face but crouches down in front of the guy. “You should leave, okay? Your friends, brother, whatever, they aren’t here. We need to shoot our video, man, that’s our job.”

His face twists into an angry snarl. “No. You want to see ghosts? I’ll show you ghosts.” With that ominous statement, he pushes his hair back from his face and curls his dirty hands into fists. A blue light, faint at first but quickly getting brighter, pulses from between his thin fingers. Ryan stumbles backwards but Shane stays where he is, tilting his head slightly. 

After a few seconds, faint glowing shapes start to fade into view. They quickly become less transparent and the room is filled with yelling and sobbing. 

In the middle of it all, the stranger rocks back and forth, humming and clutching his dog tags between his glowing fingers. 

One of the blue figures staggers closer to the camera, and a faint _‘oh, god’_ can be heard from whoever is holding it. The person - no, the ghost - has blood dripping from their head, pouring down one side of their face and obscuring one of their eyes. The clear eye is unfocused and glassy and stares straight into the camera. Rasping sobs come from their throat, sounding painful and rough. 

They come closer and closer until all that can be seen is bright blue… and then they pass through the camera, unable to touch, an observer. 

The summoner shakes out his hands, and for a moment, the ghosts disappear. Shane and Ryan are backed against the left wall, both shaking, though Ryan much more severely. 

Before they can do anything, the stranger tips back his head and lets out a scream. He squeezes the tags so hard that blood begins to drip from his fist, stained blue by the new flood of light, this time so much brighter. 

The ghosts appear again, and new ones flare into existence all around the room. The medium’s screams blend with the noise of a hundred shrieking voices, a choir of pain and anger. 

Then, with no warning at all, they each disappear… except one. There is a boy, maybe 15, in a jacket and jeans standing over the ghost-summoner, who doesn’t seem to realize that the ghosts are gone and is hanging his head and resting it on the tops of his glowing fists. 

“Klaus. Hey. Hey, take deep breaths.”

The stranger - Klaus? The same name that was heard on the spirit box… - snaps his head up, rubs his eyes. “Ben?” he croaks, his voice ruined and cracked. 

“Yeah, it’s me. I - I missed you, and uh… I’m sorry. I had a lot of time to think about stuff and well, I know I said I didn’t regret it, but I do, Klaus, I do.” And with that he starts to cry, gasping for air that he doesn’t need and never will. 

Klaus looks heartbreakingly hopeful, reaching out a trembling hand and resting it on the arm of the glowing boy. When it makes contact, he pulls back as if burned before punching his brother _hard._ Before Ben can react, Klaus has yanked him forward and is hugging him like the boy is his only lifeline. 

Neither says anything, just sitting on the floor and clutching each other. 

The camera pans to Ryan and Shane, both looking terrified and confused. “What the _fuck_ just happened?” Ryan says shakily. 

Ben whips his head towards them. “Who are these guys?” 

Klaus wipes tears from his eyes and laughs slightly. “Ghost hunters.” Ben snorts at that. “Well, boys, we best be going. Have fun with your ghost investigating.” The two of them get up and push past the cameraperson, who just lets them pass. 

By the time the three ghost hunters snap out of their shock and go upstairs, the strangers are gone without a trace. Ryan suggests leaving and Shane agrees. 

The video ends. 

It isn’t ever posted, the ghoul boys agreeing that it would be better to leave it or delete it. That week all that is put up on YouTube is a short video of the two of them in the office they use to shoot true crime videos. 

“We aren’t able to tell you exactly what happened, but we… saw something,” Ryan says nervously, his eyes darting side to side. 

“I know I said I’d never believe in ghosts but… things change,” Shane says before letting out a hysterical laugh that he quickly cuts off. 

“We’ll keep doing Buzzfeed Unsolved: Supernatural episodes, but… I doubt we’ll ever catch something like this again. At least, I hope not. See you guys next time,” Ryan says, smiling tensely at the camera. 

If you were to scroll far enough down in the comments, you would see this: someone with the username ‘KlausTheMedium’ commented ‘it was nice to meet you guys xoxo me and ben will have to drop by and say hi sometime :)’

Neither Shane nor Ryan sees this. 

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> did it work? was it at least a little spooky? please tell me :( on here or on tumblr (my url is crystalrainwing)  
> wow haha! i wrote this in like 3 days which is actually pretty good for me! not sure i totally satisfied the request buuuuut i left it very much open for a sequel so if i have the inspiration i might write a more like... funny, nice one. my love for writing angst strikes again :/ hope you enjoyed either way!  
> were they all in character i simply cannot tell  
> lyrics at the beginning are from Red Eye by Motherfolk because i love that song and you can’t stop me <333 also i think it’s a relevant song for klaus and bens relationship  
> leave a comment or kudos if you please :)


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